Parallels Announces Game Changing Innovations to Help Small and Medium Businesses Seamlessly Use Bundled Cloud Services

Parallels, the hosting and cloud services enablement leader, today announced that small and medium business (SMB) adoption of cloud services from its partners using Parallels Automation and the Application Packaging Standard(APS) grew by more than 80 percent in 2012. This growth was fueled by SMBs who are now using an average of four cloud applications each, along with more than 50 percent of the top 30 global telecommunications providers now using the Parallels cloud service delivery platform. This is in addition to the 9,000 service providers and more than 50,000 web designers and developers also using the company's software to serve millions of SMBs.

To continue enabling service providers to grow and increase their share of the SMB cloud market, which is expected to mushroom to $95B by 20151, Parallels is unveiling number of new products including a major update to the Application Packaging Standard. APS 2.0 now includes a pluggable single sign-on, service bus architecture, and customizable user interface enabling service providers to seamlessly offer differentiated bundles of cloud services with an easy purchase and activation experience. APS 2.0 will be integrated in Parallels Automation 5.5, which is expected to ship later this year, and will include more than 30 back-office improvements and new services such as support for Microsoft Lync 2013 Hosting Pack.

To help service providers manage their SMB customers' accelerating storage needs, Parallels announced Parallels Cloud Server and Parallels Cloud Storage. Parallels Cloud Storage turns existing unused disk space in servers into scalable, high-availability and high-performance distributed storage. It is now available as part of Parallels Cloud Server, which brings Parallels Virtuozzo Containers together with the company's world-class hypervisor technology into a single product.

In addition to these product announcements, Parallels also released usage data for its products. First, Parallels Plesk Panel 11 is the fastest adopted version in the company's history. Second, more than 100 Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) have joined the APS ecosystem with new services in 2012. Finally, the Parallels service provider ecosystem has grown by more than 450 new partners over the past year. These updates combined with the new product announcements continue to make Parallels the catalyst for service providers to accelerate cloud adoption by SMBs.

"Parallels mission is to help service providers profit from the cloud. 2012 has been a breakthrough year for us in this regard," said Birger Steen, CEO of Parallels. "We have assisted service providers on all continents in crafting and executing cloud strategies, and we have enabled hundreds of new, useful cloud services for SMBs. We have continued extending our cloud service delivery platform: Parallels Cloud Storage dramatically reduces the cost of providing highly available storage. Parallels Automation 5.5 with APS 2.0 lets service providers deliver a Seamless experience for SMBs buying multiple cloud services, with a library of more than 400 apps to choose from. We are more optimistic about our partners' success, as well as our own, than ever before."

"In working with hosters and service providers since the industry emerged in the late '90s, we have seen the acceleration of demand to create, deliver and manage bundled services for SMBs," said Serguei Beloussov, Chairman and Chief Architect of Parallels. "APS 2.0 is the game-changing technology that will make this happen across all Parallels products."

"SMBs are adopting cloud services at an accelerating rate, and they also have more choice than ever before in where to buy their cloud services," said Philbert Shih, Managing Director of Structure Research. "If service providers expect to stay relevant, they need to have access to actionable market research and analysis, the right enabling technologies, and a powerful partner ecosystem so they stay ahead of the competition. Parallels brings all of these requirements together in an integrated fashion specifically designed to help service providers succeed."

These announcements are being made in Las Vegas this week at Parallels Summit 2013. The event addresses all aspects of the company's service provider enablement solutions and business: Parallels service delivery software, expansion of the widest cloud services catalog, the broadest partner ecosystem, proprietary industry research and analysis, and a suite of go-to-market consulting and implementation services.

"During our evaluation process, it quickly became clear that Parallels was the only vendor that could offer us a proven off-the-shelf product and deploy it within a few months. In addition to the Parallels Automation platform, Parallels was able to provide us with the business consulting services we needed to configure it optimally for our offering and advise us on how to take it to market effectively in multiple countries. The fact that Parallels also has a very strong ecosystem of third-party partners, with applications that we can quickly and easily add to the platform over time, was also a key factor in our decision," said Rolf Magne Aasen, CTO at Telenor Business Internet Services." Throughout the entire process, Parallels has gone the extra mile to fulfill our requirements, and the team's 'can do attitude' enables rapid time to market across multiple geographies. We simply could not have met our demanding launch schedule without them, as well as develop such a complete offering for our next wave."

Next Generation of Cloud Service Delivery Software from Parallels

Parallels also announced new automation, virtualization and cloud storage products in addition to comprehensive enhancements to Parallels control panel products at Parallels Summit.

With Parallels software, service providers can manage infrastructure, automate provisioning and accurately bill for the widest range of cloud services for SMBs, while offering best-in-class control panels for self-service for the not only the provider but also for their resellers, IT administrators and end users. With a complete stack of cloud enablement software, Parallels can help service providers of any size offer SMBs the cloud services they need, ranging from shared hosting to hosted communications and collaboration to infrastructure-as-a-service to software-as-a-service. Products highlighted at the Summit included:

"APS 2.0 takes the ability to integrate cloud services and create a seamless, unified experience for SMBs to the next level. It goes beyond software installation and defines a bus allowing independent cloud applications to interact," said Ruslan Fazlyev, CEO of Ecwid. "We are pleased to be in the early adopter program for APS 2.0."

Announcing Parallels Automation 5.5: Parallels Automation 5.5 is expected to ship later this year and will have APS 2.0 built in and fully integrated. Navigation across billing and provisioning has been streamlined for an easy purchase and activation experience. The set of RESTful APIs has been expanded. New and updated core services include Linux and Windows Hosting, Microsoft Exchange 2013, Microsoft Lync 2013 and Cloud Infrastructure. This makes Parallels Automation the platform of choice for service providers and developers to innovate and differentiate.

"Parallels Automation combined with the APS standard, managed by KPN Software Online, form the underlying core technologies of KPN's Cloud Store," said KPN Omar Benameur." By eliminating the complexity of order delivery and payment processing, various KPN Business Units including KPN Wholesale, E-Plus and Base are able to aggressively recruit both service providers and ISVs to build out their own customized and diverse cloud marketplaces."

"Parallels Cloud Server changes the game for VPS and cloud hosting," said David Collins, CTO of HostGator. "The way Parallels Cloud Storage utilizes unused disk space on the servers is the missing piece of the puzzle."

Announcing Parallels Cloud Server:Parallels Cloud Server now makes it easy to offer all cloud infrastructure services customers want. It includes Parallels Virtuozzo Containers together with our world-class hypervisor technology and Parallels Cloud Storage, combing all of the pieces to enable best-in-class infrastructure services.

"We've been a global partner since 2005, offering a variety of virtualization solutions from Parallels in order to provide our customers with greater scalability," said Nathan Day, Chief Scientist for SoftLayer Technologies. "By extending our portfolio to include Parallels Cloud Server, we're enabling our customers to obtain high availability servers while reducing maintenance costs."

Announcing Parallels Plesk Automation:Parallels Plesk Automation is a scalable, multi-server cloud automation solution enabling a Seamless growth path for Parallels Plesk Panel customers to scale to thousands of servers and a wide range of services. It also provides the ability to centrally manage end customers.

"Never before has there been a company with a product line that can meet every cloud and hosting need from the small single domain on a virtual private server, to a provider that needs centralized management for many diverse servers, to the full customized automation platforms for the largest enterprise customer," said Stephen Evans, Director of Operations, APYL Inc. "With Parallels Plesk Automation, Parallels gives us the ability to grow and excel like never before."